Must have apps for your iPad (updated)

By Cody Willard

This is the iPad version of this article. For the best five games, apps and utilities for iPhone, please click here. For the best five games, apps and utilities for Android, please click here.

I’ve been reading JP Morgan’s Ripple Effect daily summary of tech and media news since back when it was still published by Bear Stearns. I’ve been reading it almost every single week day for almost ten years now, I would guess, and it’s an essential tool to stay up on the latest tech trends, at least those that Wall Street is focusing on. These days, as you can imagine, there’s getting to be quite a bit of focus on apps, tablets, and smartphones. Here’s some of today’s headlines as compiled by the Ripple:

iPhone:Apple approves Google’s iPhone application. This comes over a year after the initial Google Voice application was rejected by Apple’s app store. [Wall Street Journal]

GOOG:Google is currently testing picture-search marketing related to its Google Goggles application. Google Goggles allows the user to use pictures taken with their smartphones to search the web. Google is working on a way to have these results turn up sponsored advertisements. [Wall Street Journal]

Wireless: Mobile phone companies hope to offer services that could compete with the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook. As the market for mobile entertainment, games and productivity tools continues to grow – wireless operators hope to move from just providing the means of access to actually providing these services. Winning over a piece of the application revenue pie will likely be a topic of conversation at Morgan Stanley’s TMT conference this week in Barcelona. [Bloomberg]

NWSA: Dow Jones is preparing to make some digital changes in their business to business division; the changes are geared towards improving revenues within specialist readers. [FT]

RIMM – the co has shown off a new video of its PlayBook, showing the device supporting ADBE flash and offering a faster web browsing experience vs. the iPad – Apple Insider

And everywhere you go, people are trying to adapt to this new app world (hmmm, would that be “adappt”?).

Whether it’s the Walgreen’s exec next to you on the plane using his Dell Windows XP laptop with his brand new iPad in his lap telling you he’ll soon be able to travel with just his iPad but that he’s got “almost no apps on there yet. Do you know which ones are good?”

Or the movers whose dedicated Garmin GPS system wouldn’t charge but who found you using their Motorola Droid with Google Maps but lamented aloud to you when you asked, “Nah, I don’t have Angry Birds or any other cool games on here yet. We need them for the long, boring drives when we’re sick of talking to each other though. Do you know a couple good ones?”

So here’s my advice. Get on the app train. Join the app revolution. Start using your smartphones because your world is changing and ten years from now the whole world will be app-ified. See what my favorite app investments are by checking out Revolution Investing.

And straight from the app network I founded, AppConsumer.com, here are all the apps, games and utilities you need for your iPad:

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About The Cody Word

Cody Willard writes the Revolution Investing investment newsletter for MarketWatch and posts the trades from his personal account at TradingWithCody.com He is the founder of WallStreetAll-Stars.com and the principal of CL Willard Capital. Cody serves as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is on the University of New Mexico Alumni Board. He was an anchor on the Fox Business Network, where he was the co-host of the long-time #1-rated show on the network, Fox Business Happy Hour. Cody, a former hedge fund manager, and his stock picks and economic outlooks have been featured on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, ABC’s 20/20, CBS Evening News, CNBC’s SquawkBox, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, as well as in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many other outlets.